I arrived in the classroom, ready to share my knowledge and experience with 75 students who would be in my English Literature class. Having ___1___ in the USA for 17 years, I had no doubt about my ability to hold their ___2___ and to impress on them my admiration for the literature of my mother tongue.

I was shocked when the monitor shouted “___3___!” and the entire class rose as I ___4___ the room, and I was somewhat ___5___ about how to get them to sit down again, but as soon as that awkwardness(尴尬) was over, I quickly ___6___ my calmness and began what I thought was a fact-packed lecture, ___7___ to gain their respect—perhaps even their admiration. I went back to my office with the rosy glow which came from a sense of ___8___.

My students kept diaries. ___9___, as I read them, the rosy glow was gradually ___10___ by a strong sense of sadness. The first diary said, “Our literature teacher didn’t teach anything today. Perhaps her next ___11___ will be better.” Greatly surprised, I read diary after diary, each expressing a ___12___ theme. “Didn’t teach anything? I described the entire philosophical(哲学的) framework of Western thought and laid the historical background for all the works we’ll study in class, ” I ___13___. “How can they say I didn’t teach them anything?”

It was a long term, and it gradually became ___14___ that my ideas about education were not the same as those of my students. I thought a teacher’s job was to ___15___ interesting questions and provide enough background so that students could ___16___ their own conclusions. My students thought a teacher’s job was to provide exact information as ___17___ and clearly as possible. What a ___18___!

However, I also learned a lot, and my ___19___ with my Chinese students has made a better American teacher, knowing how to teach in a(n) different ___20___.